Trump's Spectacle Diplomacy: MBS, Al-Sharaa, and the Death of Values

Another day in the gilded reality TV show that is our current world order.

There are weeks that unravel slowly, and then there are weeks that rip the mask off the face of power, leaving the snarling, grinning skull beneath. This was one of those weeks. It was a week of such audacious, theatrical cynicism that it felt less like diplomacy and more like a casting call for a new world order, directed by a king in his own gilded reality show. Within the span of a few days, Donald Trump rolled out the red carpet for two men who, until very recently, were considered untouchable by the fastidious gatekeepers of Western diplomacy.

First came Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, a man whose name remains inextricably linked to the brutal murder and dismemberment of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. He arrived to the full pomp and circumstance of a state visit, a spectacle of flags, military pageantry, and the gleaming chrome of a rehabilitated reputation (Associated Press, 2025; Guardian, 2025a). But beneath the pageantry, the power dynamic was inverted. It has been said that Trump has never met an autocrat he did not like, but with MBS, he seemed to meet his master. The Crown Prince wore a knowing smile, the look of a man who was playing the president, telling him exactly what he wanted to hear. It was clear who was in control, and it was not the host. In one telling exchange, MBS mentioned business dealings worth a trillion dollars. Trump interjected, his eyes wide: “A trillion, not 600 billion!” He was like a child getting extra pocket money for being a good boy, mesmerised by the sheer size of the number (Yahoo News, 2025). Watch Trump litereally swoon in the below video.

Only days earlier, in a quieter but no less significant ceremony, came Ahmed al-Sharaa, the newly installed president of Syria. Al-Sharaa is a man who, as the former leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an affiliate group of Al-Qaeda, once had a $10 million American bounty on his head for his troubles (Reuters, 2025a; ISPI, 2025).

What does it mean when a man implicated by U.S. intelligence in the murder of a Washington Post journalist is granted a red-carpet rehabilitation, complete with a candle-lit dinner at the White House? What does it mean when a former jihadist commander, whose group emerged from the ashes of an Al-Qaeda affiliate, becomes a guest of honour in the Oval Office? And what, precisely, do these two events, occurring in such close proximity, reveal about the true shape of power in the dying light of the American century? The answer is as simple as it is terrifying: the era of value-based diplomacy is dead. In its place, we have spectacle diplomacy, a transactional theatre where morality is negotiable, but power is not.

The Oval Office as Theatre Stage

The White House has always been a stage, but under Trump, it has been gutted and retrofitted. It is no longer a space for sober diplomatic negotiation; it is a broadcast studio for elite rehabilitation, a soundstage where inconvenient histories are erased with floodlights and teleprompters. The Oval Office, once a symbol of at least the idea of moral authority, has become a reputation laundering machine. It takes in the bloodstained garments of autocrats and warlords and, through the alchemy of photo-ops and presidential pronouncements, spins them into the crisp, clean linen of statesmanship. The arrivals of MBS and al-Sharaa were two acts in the same grotesque play, a dramaturgy of power where the script is written by the highest bidder.

MBS’s arrival was a masterclass in the semiotics of shock and awe. It was a scene straight from a dictator’s wet dream: the roar of a military flyover tearing the sky, the rhythmic clatter of a cavalry procession on Pennsylvania Avenue, the dizzying forest of flags creating a corridor of legitimacy (ABC News, 2025). It was a spectacle designed to overwhelm the senses, to drown out the lingering screams from the Saudi consulate in Istanbul with a tidal wave of gold and chrome. This was not a meeting, but a coronation by another name. In contrast, al-Sharaa’s entrance was a study in calculated discretion, a quiet slipping in through a side door, the kind of entrance reserved for a backroom deal, not a head of state (Reuters, 2025a). Yet the effect was the same. Seated beside Trump, the former militant, now clad in the sharp, bespoke armour of a statesman, was sanctified by the sheer proximity to power (Le Monde, 2025). The message was clear: whether through overwhelming force or quiet conspiracy, optics override ethics. The visual language of power - the flags, the suits, the solemn handshakes - is all that is required to rewrite history.

Mohammed bin Salman: The Crown Prince Who Walked Through Fire and Came Out Perfumed

The rehabilitation of Mohammed bin Salman is a case study in the mechanics of modern power. Here is a man who the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) concluded, with a high degree of confidence, approved the 2018 operation to capture or kill Jamal Khashoggi (ODNI, 2021). And Khashoggi was only the most famous victim. This is the same man who has overseen a brutal war in Yemen, a conflict that has created one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters and led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians from violence, hunger, and disease (Genocide Watch, 2021; Guardian, 2018). This is the same man who, in a move of Shakespearean ruthlessness, imprisoned hundreds of his own relatives and rivals in the Ritz-Carlton hotel under the guise of an “anti-corruption” purge, torturing and extorting them to consolidate his own power (Human Rights Watch, 2019; NYT, 2017). For a time, he was a pariah. Western leaders kept their distance. The stain of these crimes seemed indelible. But in the world of spectacle diplomacy, there is no stain that a large enough chequebook cannot remove.

Trump welcomed MBS not as a controversial figure, but as a “friend.” He publicly praised the Crown Prince’s supposed “human rights reforms,” a statement of such breathtaking audacity that it bordered on performance art (People, 2025; Guardian, 2025a). When a reporter had the temerity to raise the issue of human rights, Trump did not answer the question. He disciplined the questioner – the second time in a matter of days. “You don’t have to embarrass our guest,” he chided, a perfect encapsulation of the new rules of the game: the comfort of the powerful is more important than the truth (Guardian, 2025a).

This dynamic was perfectly illustrated in that moment. In a rare instance of unscripted truth, a reporter dared to ask the Crown Prince directly about the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. Before MBS could even formulate a response, Trump interjected, a human shield for the Saudi autocrat. “You don’t have to embarrass our guest,” he snapped, turning on the journalist (Guardian, 2025a). In that single, contemptuous phrase, the entire ecosystem of dominance was laid bare. The story, as it was reported, became about Trump’s defence of his guest, his dismissal of the press. The media dutifully reported the exchange, but in doing so, they allowed the narrative to be hijacked. The focus shifted from the unanswered question - the state-sanctioned murder of a journalist - to the procedural drama of the press conference itself. Trump’s intervention was not a defence. It was a diversion. He was not protecting his guest; he was protecting the spectacle. He created a minor controversy about press etiquette to eclipse a major crime. The media, by focusing on the drama of the exchange rather than the substance of the evasion, became unwitting actors in his play. They reported the performance, but they entirely missed the point.

The real business of the visit was, of course, business. A new U.S.–Saudi Strategic Defense Agreement was announced, a deal that will pour billions of dollars into the coffers of American arms manufacturers (White House, 2025). The centrepiece of this agreement was Trump’s approval for the future sale of F-35 fighter jets, America’s most advanced stealth aircraft, a prize the Saudis have long coveted (Reuters, 2025c; The Hill, 2025). Reuters also reported that other multi-billion-dollar weapons deals were on the table, a timely reminder that in the military-industrial complex, ethics are a luxury item (Reuters, 2025b). The Guardian aptly described the visit as the culmination of MBS’s “rehabilitation tour,” a journey from international disgrace to the warm embrace of the White House, paved with oil money and arms deals (Guardian, 2025c). MBS’s visit proves that in 2025, power is purely transactional. The predator class can always return from scandal, as long as they come bearing gifts.

Subscribe to Notes From Plague Island and join our growing community of readers and thinkers.

Ahmed al-Sharaa: The Former HTS Commander Who Became a Statesman Overnight

If the MBS visit was a study in transactional power, the visit of Ahmed al-Sharaa was a journey into the surreal. Here is a man who, until very recently, was on the other side of the “war on terror.” As the leader of HTS, a group that grew out of Jabhat al-Nusra, an Al-Qaeda affiliate, al-Sharaa was the enemy. The U.S. State Department had labelled him a terrorist and offered a $10 million reward for information leading to his capture (Reuters, 2025a). Now, he was in the Oval Office, being praised by the American president as “strong” and “tough.”

This is not diplomacy. This is instead myth-making on an industrial scale. In the space of a few months, al-Sharaa’s past has been reframed, his extremist history overwritten by the ink of geopolitical usefulness. Trump, with his characteristic flair for the absurd, dismissed al-Sharaa’s history with a wave of his hand: “a rough past - we’ve all had rough pasts” (Sky News, 2025). The lifting of some U.S. sanctions on Syria, a move that would have been unthinkable a year ago, was the final act in this political alchemy (Guardian, 2025b). The message is as clear as it is chilling: violence is forgivable, as long as you become useful. The distinction between terrorist and statesman is not a moral one, but a strategic one. It is a distinction that can be erased by a single handshake in the right room.

The Predator Class: A System With No Moral Memory

MBS and al-Sharaa are not outliers. They are case studies in how the global predator class operates. This is not a shadowy cabal, but a system that functions in plain sight, a closed loop of power and money circulating among a select group of billionaires, fossil-fuel magnates, arms dealers, authoritarian monarchs, and the compliant Western leaders who serve as their concierges. This system operates on a simple, brutal logic: it erases its victims. It has no moral memory. The bodies - of journalists, of dissidents, of civilians caught in the crossfire of proxy wars - are simply collateral damage, the cost of doing business. Accountability is a quaint notion, a relic of a bygone era. Truth is a commodity to be bought and sold. And memory is a liability, something to be actively suppressed with the bright, flashing lights of the next spectacle.

This is the predator class at work. It is MBS, fresh from his public rehabilitation, signing a deal for a trillion dollars in U.S. investments while the family of Jamal Khashoggi is forced to watch the man who ordered his murder be celebrated as a visionary. It is al-Sharaa, the former jihadist, being welcomed into the heart of Western power while the Syrian families who fled his militias are scattered across the globe, their homes destroyed, their lives shattered. The common denominators are not values or principles, but weapons, energy, investment, and access. In this system, certain things are always present: the gleam of gold, the smell of oil, the cold steel of weaponry. And certain things are always absent: the faces of the dead, the voices of the silenced, the long, dark shadows of consequence.

Realpolitik, or Something Worse?

Defenders of these meetings, the tired apologists for power, will inevitably whisper the word “realpolitik.” They will argue that in a dangerous world, leaders must make difficult choices, that one must sup with devils to protect the national interest. But this is not realpolitik. It is a post-modern perversion of it, a nihilistic frenzy of transactionalism utterly detached from any coherent long-term strategy. Realpolitik, at least in its classical formulation, was a cold, calculating philosophy of statecraft. It was amoral, but it was not irrational. It assumed a degree of foresight, a chess game played across generations (Seale, 1988; Yergin, 2011).

What we are witnessing now is something far more corrosive. It is the diplomacy of the dopamine hit, a series of short-term deals driven by personal chemistry, ego gratification, and the prospect of immediate financial or political gain. There is no grand strategy here, no patient construction of a stable world order. There is only the next deal, the next headline, the next opportunity to perform strength on the global stage. The pretence of a moral framework, the thin veneer of a rhetorical commitment to democracy and human rights, has been stripped away and burned for fuel. Trump does not bother to hide the transactional nature of his relationships; he revels in it. He has transformed the presidency into a global concierge service for autocrats, and in doing so, he has validated their methods and blessed their crimes.

The Cost of Looking Away

Who pays the price for this spectacle diplomacy? The cost is not an abstract entry on a geopolitical ledger. It is measured in human lives and shattered futures. It is paid by women like Loujain al-Hathloul, the Saudi activist who was imprisoned and tortured for the crime of demanding the right to drive, even as MBS is feted in Washington for his “reforms.” It is paid by the citizens of Idlib, who lived for years under the brutal thumb of HTS, and by the millions of Syrians displaced or killed in a conflict prolonged and complicated by actors like al-Sharaa. It is paid, most viscerally, by the family of Jamal Khashoggi, who must watch the man who ordered his butchering be embraced as a partner for peace, his crime dissolved in the warm glow of a state dinner.

The cost is also paid in America, in the slow, steady corrosion of democratic norms. A presidency that aligns itself with authoritarian power abroad inevitably begins to adopt its methods in the U.S. When the leader of the free world declares that the comfort of a murderous crown prince is more important than the truth, it sends a clear message to law enforcement, to the courts, and to every federal agency: accountability is optional. When a former terrorist is rebranded as a statesman on the South Lawn, it teaches a generation that there are no principles, only interests. The international implication is the death of value-based diplomacy and the rise of a global cartel of unaccountable strongmen. The domestic implication is the slow, steady death of the very idea of a nation of laws.

Conclusion: The Week the Future Announced Itself

This was the week the future announced itself. The two meetings, with MBS and al-Sharaa, were not separate events. They were two sides of the same debased coin, a single, unified message from the heart of the predator class: Morality is negotiable; power is not. Trump’s White House has become a clearing house for pardoning the powerful, a place where the crimes of the past can be erased by the promises of future profit. The predator class strengthens itself through the ritual of optics, and the willing forgetfulness of a Western power structure that has lost its moral compass.

We, the public, are invited to applaud this grim spectacle. We are encouraged to believe that this is what strength looks like, that this is how the world works. But we do not have to. The task, now more than ever, is to expose the myth-making machinery behind the spectacle. It is to pull back the curtain and reveal the grubby, transactional reality that lies behind the gilded facade. Because ignoring it, pretending that it is normal, is how democracies die in plain sight.

Or support us with a one-off tip → Buy Me a Coffee

References

ABC News. 2025. Takeaways from Trump’s White House meeting with Saudi crown prince. Available at: https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/takeaways-trumps-white-house-meeting-saudi-crown-prince-127648382[Accessed 20 November 2025].

Associated Press. 2025. Trump meets with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the White House. Available at: https://apnews.com/article/trump-saudi-arabia-mbs-white-house-visit [Accessed 20 November 2025].

Genocide Watch. 2021. Genocide Emergency: Saudi Arabia and the war in Yemen. Available at: https://www.genocidewatch.com/single-post/genocide-emergency-saudi-arabia-and-the-war-in-yemen [Accessed 20 November 2025].

Guardian. 2018. Mohammed bin Salman should be prosecuted over the Yemen conflict. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2018/dec/04/mohammed-bin-salman-should-be-prosecuted-over-the-yemen-conflict [Accessed 20 November 2025].

Guardian. 2025a. Trump welcomes Saudi Crown Prince amid human rights criticism. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/nov/18/trump-saudi-crown-prince-mbs-white-house [Accessed 20 November 2025].

Guardian. 2025b. US lifts some sanctions as Syrian president al-Sharaa visits the White House. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/nov/10/us-syria-sanctions-al-sharaa-white-house [Accessed 20 November 2025].

Guardian. 2025c. Mohammed bin Salman’s rehabilitation tour continues. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/nov/19/mbs-rehabilitation-tour-trump-white-house [Accessed 20 November 2025].

Human Rights Watch. 2019. The High Cost of Change: Repression Under Saudi Crown Prince Tarnishes Reforms. Available at: https://www.hrw.org/report/2019/11/04/high-cost-change/repression-under-saudi-crown-prince-tarnishes-reforms [Accessed 20 November 2025].

ISPI. 2025. Syria: A former jihadist in Washington? What to know about the Trump–al-Sharaa meeting. Institute for International Political Studies. Available at: https://www.ispionline.it/en/publication/syria-former-jihadist-washington-trump-al-sharaa-meeting [Accessed 20 November 2025].

Le Monde. 2025. Ahmed al-Sharaa: The first Syrian president invited to the White House. Available at: https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2025/11/10/ahmed-al-sharaa-first-syrian-president-white-house [Accessed 20 November 2025].

New York Times. 2017. Saudi Arabia Arrests 11 Princes, Including Billionaire Alwaleed bin Talal. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/04/world/middleeast/saudi-arabia-waleed-bin-talal.html [Accessed 20 November 2025].

ODNI. 2021. Declassified assessment on the killing of Jamal Khashoggi. Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Available at: https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/Assessment-Saudi-Gov-Role-in-JK-Death-20210226.pdf [Accessed 20 November 2025].

People. 2025. Trump praises MBS during White House visit. Available at: https://people.com/trump-praises-mbs-white-house-visit [Accessed 20 November 2025].

Reuters. 2025a. Trump meets Syrian President al-Sharaa, capping major turnaround. Available at: https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/trump-meets-syrian-president-al-sharaa-2025-11-10 [Accessed 20 November 2025].

Reuters. 2025b. Trump, Saudi Crown Prince discuss major defence deals. Available at: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-saudi-crown-prince-discuss-major-defence-deals-2025-11-18 [Accessed 20 November 2025].

Reuters. 2025c. Trump says visiting Saudi crown prince knew nothing about Khashoggi killing. Available at: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-welcome-saudi-crown-prince-with-offer-fighter-jets-business-deals-2025-11-18[Accessed 20 November 2025].

Seale, P. 1988. Asad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East. London: I.B. Tauris.

Sky News. 2025. Trump hosts Syrian president al-Sharaa at historic Oval Office meeting. Available at: https://news.sky.com/story/trump-hosts-syrian-president-al-sharaa-oval-office-meeting [Accessed 20 November 2025].

The Hill. 2025. How Trump’s Saudi F-35 deal could alter Mideast balance. Available at: https://thehill.com/policy/defense/5612954-trump-f35-saudi-arabia-deal [Accessed 20 November 2025].

White House. 2025. Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump solidifies partnership with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Available at: https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/11/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-solidifies-economic-and-defense-partnership-with-the-kingdom-of-saudi-arabia [Accessed 20 November 2025].

Yahoo News. 2025. $1 trillion man: Trump woos Saudi prince at White House. Available at: https://ca.news.yahoo.com/1-trillion-man-trump-woos-044357410.html [Accessed 20 November 2025].

Yergin, D. 2011. The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World. New York: Penguin.